Sparth Axe- Taught by Ken Pfrenger and Chris Thompson. Chris handled the history while I demoed the use of the big axe going through the 10 lessons as set forth by the Cateran Society.

CQC knife entries- Taught by Tim Anderson. Fun class with little int he way of actual technique instruction…we all have our own way of doing things, what he gave us were suggestions and ways to train. Nice stuff.

MacGregor’s bayonet and some combatives concepts- Taught by Chris Thompson, quick run through MacGregor’s bayonet then some work on combatives for an upcoming project.

Zachary Wylde’s staff- taught by Randal Gustitis, simple but interesting system of staff play from 1711.

Numbers way down this year. We may change location and take this on the road to Dayton next year. Or still hold it here and do a second event in Dayton in the fall. Still in the works.

s always the social aspect of events like this were very important, seeing old friends, making new ones and sharing food drink and martial arts make this sort of thing the highlight of my year.

I want to thank all that were able to make it out to teach and learn and thank those who tired to make it but came up a bit short.There is always next year or the year after that.

About 20 minutes work on Fitzsimmons shift working several variation using the basic concept…we even transposed the idea over to navaja work.

Chris then took us through some really great groundwork, mostly escaping from the bottom. After the escapes we did a massive amount of live rolling, well Gary did a massive amount of live rolling. He went through all of us at least once and sometimes twice. Getting ready for Sambo Nationals Aug 17th.

On a personal note…on Monday my 400th child was born. I finally managed to make a boy…Angus Cormac Pfrenger 7lbs 4 oz…my plan is to make him a total death machine by age 5. I expect many phone calls from his kindergarten teacher.

My email has been hacked so if you are trying tor each me at kenpfrenger@gmail.com…it won’t go through at this time. I am working to restore this. For now I can be reached via facebook or through my alternate address: cinaet@yahoo.com

His interest at this time is on the Irish material so whenever he comes we will be sure to adjust the training accordingly. He has a fencing background so he looked comfortable with a weapon in his hand and already knew how to make his body do what he wanted it to, which was nice. Much easier to train someone who already has a background like that.

We stuck with the basics, stance, grip, parries and blocks and basic strikes. We will get into the grappling and boxing in the Irish style after a few more sessions. If all goes as planned we are going to do an Irish only class every other Thursday night. So if the idea of smacking each other with shillelaghs appeals to you and you are int he area, come on out and join us

Before I get into the meat of the post I will give a quick rundown of our session last Wednesday…
Chris, Matt and I.
2 rounds shadow boxing
2 rounds 3 count cadence drill
2 rounds feed and follow footwork
1 round freestyle footwork
Once again we worked on mechanics for the straight rear…this time we added the Jab first and followed with a lead hook. Really keeping Dempsey’s shoulder whirl on the mind and making sure our form was a perfect as we could.

Next up Sambo…
Since we had the Sambo tournie coming up on Saturday we wanted to do a nice light sambo workout.
4 rounds offbalance grip work
2 rounds sport sambo
We then went over some of the basic throws we were looking to land.

Roll on Saturday…
Doors opened at 9:30 AM in Chillicothe OH about 4 hours SW of us. I gave Chris the wrong time and he missed riding with us…totally my screw up.

Lots and lots of competitor in sparring and grappling so many that at 4 PM sambo was still a distant thought. Prior commitments made us have to leave at 4 so we missed sambo altogether but since they did not get started before 6 they ended up canceling the sambo competition. I felt less bad about messing up the time for Chris.

So we talked on the way home about how bummed we were that we did not get to compete. That was the only real con, on the pro side…we worked really hard for over a month on improving our sambo and it did indeed improve…so even though we did not get to compete, it was far form a total bust.

I had put of buying a Cold Steel poly blackthorn for quite some time. Mainly because I have enough sticks and adding another one was not a priority and especially adding one of man made materials. not that I am so traditional that I can’t give it a whirl but it took me a while to come around.

I bought it off of ebay for $33, new still in it’s original package.

The picture for it is a little deceiving. it looks pretty good int he pic as you would expect it to. Once in hand it was thick and too heavy IMO and I like heavy sticks.

The head was clearly a glued on piece and it did not look like it would stay on …basically this is meant as a walking stick and not a fighting stick. That is fine I suppose but for anyone reading this, i would suspect they are more interested in how this thing handles as a weapon.

So I took it out a rapped it against a 4×4 post, After only two hits it became clear that the glued on piece was not only a glued on piece but it had been coated to look like wood:

So not only was the grip too big and ungainly, it was coated to look like wood very thinly.

Back out I went to the post…20 whacks later (hard whacks mind you.) the glued on piece came off showing tha tit was held on by glued in pegs:

So if you are planning on getting this to walk with, fine, it could use a rubber tip on the bottom but other than that it should work but do not buy this to train with, not only is it too heavy but the idiotic looking head will pop off.

So I took a band saw and a sander to the head area of the stick and reworked it a bit. This brought the weight down to a more reasonable level, still heavy but manageable. It is definitely not pretty but I think it can now be used for some training purposes and ok for carry.

So buy at your own risk. If you want to do a little work after it breaks, it does make a decent carry or possibly even a pell stick.

I apologize for the low picture quality in this post. Digital camera on the fritz so I had to use my phone. I wanted to get this posted quickly though just in case anyone else was taking the plunge.